Samuel Turvey (Bloomsbury: out now in the UK; 30 April in the US)
IT MUST have been disconcerting for biologist Samuel Turvey as he hunted for fossils in a cave on the Indonesian island of Sumba between 2011 and 2014. He attracted the close attentions of 鈥渉uge tail-less whip scorpions with sickening flattened bodies, large spiny grabbing mouthparts, and grotesquely thin and elongated legs鈥�.
In , Turvey shares more exotic animals and worlds. But why was an evolutionary biologist hunting fossils? The answer has to do with the dual nature of islands. Life, he says, 鈥渄oes spectacular, ridiculous, experimental things on islands, making them endlessly fascinating to students of evolution鈥�.
Advertisement
Take New Caledonia, an archipelago that is about 1200 kilometres east of Australia and is a fragment of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana. It boasts bizarre aquatic conifers and even shrubby parasitic conifers without any roots. Then there is Madagascar, which hosts the aye-aye 鈥� a primate equivalent to the woodpecker in its ability to penetrate wood in search of food.
My favourite in Turvey鈥檚 book of wonders is the now extinct cave goat Myotragus that lived on predator-free Majorca and Menorca. Relieved of the need to watch its back, it evolved front-facing eyes, giving the creature the appearance of a person wearing a goat mask.
But island life is also incredibly vulnerable. The biggest killers by far are visitations of fast-evolving diseases. From the 16th to 19th centuries, exploration and colonisation by Europeans decimated human populations of Pacific archipelagos, as a first wave of dysentery was followed by smallpox, measles and influenza.
Animals brought on the trip proved almost as catastrophic. Contrary to clich茅, Westerners on Mauritius didn鈥檛 hunt the dodo to extinction 鈥� rats did. And let鈥檚 not forget Tibbles, the cat who, along with her offspring, is said to have wiped out the Stephens Island wren in 1894.
There are lessons to be learned, of course. Islands may be treasure troves of evolutionary innovation, but most of their treasures are already extinct. As for conserving their wildlife, Turvey asks how, without a good understanding of the local fossil record, 鈥渨e even define what constitutes a 鈥榥atural鈥� ecosystem, or an objective restoration target to aim for鈥�.
A tale of islands and their ephemeral delights would have made for an arresting book, but Turvey, an excellent raconteur, can鈥檛 resist spicing up his account with tales of Sumba鈥檚 mythical wild men, the giant, Yeti-like 鈥淢ili Mongga鈥�, who, it is said, used to build walls and help out with the ploughing 鈥� until their habit of stealing food got them all killed by the infuriated human population.
Why should we pay attention to such tales? Well, Sumba is just 50 kilometres south of Flores, where, in 2003, an Australian team unearthed an unknown, 1-metre-high hominin. If there were tiny hobbits on Flores, might there have been giants on Sumba? Might surviving Mili Mongga still be lurking in the forests?
Turvey uses local legends to launch fascinating forays into the island鈥檚 history and anthropology, to explain why large animals, fetched up in such places, grow smaller, while small animals grow larger. He also has fun, largely at his own expense.
When one villager describes a Mili Mongga skull as being 2 feet long with teeth 鈥渁s long as a finger鈥�, 鈥淚 got the feeling,鈥� says Turvey, 鈥渢hat there might now be some exaggeration going on.鈥� Never say never, though. Soon, Turvey and his long-suffering team are following gamely, on missions up crags and past crocodile-infested swamps and into holes 鈥� sometimes ones where visitors from other villages go to relieve themselves.
The levity continues. 鈥淭here was the cave that some village kids told us contained a human skull, which turned out to be a rotten coconut under some bat dung,鈥� recalls Turvey. 鈥淭here was the cave that was sacred, which seemed to mean that no one could remember exactly where it was.鈥�
Turvey鈥檚 serious explorations unearth two new mammal genera (ancestral forms of rat). He and his team don鈥檛 bring back evidence of a new hominin, of course. But what鈥檚 not to enjoy about a tall tale, especially when it paints such a vivid and insightful portrait of a land and its people?
Simon Ings is a writer based in London
